Simi Council Slaps a Ban on Mud Wrestling

SIMI VALLEY — Saying its family oriented community should be free from the scourge of salacious adult entertainment, the Simi Valley City Council on Thursday placed a temporary ban on female mud wrestling at bars or restaurants within city limits.

Councilman Bill Davis said residents’ reaction to a proposal, which has subsequently been abandoned, to bring female mud wrestling to a local restaurant was unequivocal.

“They’re telling me to stop it. They believe it’s the beginning of the end,” Davis said. “They say: ‘Please don’t do that to the city. We ran away from that type of activity. We came here because it was safe to raise a family.’ ”

Simi Valley officials say the city has never had any adult bookstores, nude clubs or mud wrestling. The only adult entertainment currently available is at Snooky’s, a bar on Donville Avenue that features women dancing in bikinis.

The council, which agreed to extend an existing moratorium prohibiting the creation of strip clubs and other adult-oriented businesses into next summer, also formally agreed to appeal a U.S. District Court judge’s decision that struck down Simi’s ordinance to limit the location of adult businesses.

To keep mud wrestling out of the city, the council adopted an emergency 45-day ban on all contests or exhibitions in restaurants and bars that involve two or more people in physical contact where the contestants apply a foreign substance to their bodies and perform on nonsolid surfaces.

The genesis of the mud-wrestling moratorium was an application from Tim Drury, owner of Schooner’s Restaurant on East Los Angeles Avenue, who applied to bring mud wrestling to his eatery.

Drury recently withdrew the application after the owner of the building that houses his restaurant refused to go along with the idea.

On Thursday, Drury denounced the council for making mud wrestling such a big issue and said the city should let its citizens decide whether they want to view the bikini-clad women.

“The individual has the right to come in or not to come in,” Drury said. “I think they are making a big to-do about nothing. That’s the bottom line.”

His plan was to begin the wrestling matches after 9 p.m. and restrict attendance at the restaurant, which sells beer and wine, after that hour to patrons 21 and older.

City Council members said they created a second moratorium because they were worried mud wrestling might not be restricted by the current moratorium on adult businesses.

“It certainly wasn’t a clean-clipped law,” said Mayor Greg Stratton. “So we thought that rather than stretch one, we’ll craft a new one that is correct.”

City officials said extending the original moratorium gives the city time to craft an ordinance that would specify what types of adult entertainment businesses are acceptable and what public safeguards would apply if one were permitted.

The original ban was based on a four-year battle Simi had with businessman Phil Young, who wanted to open a local nude dance club called the Dancing Bear. The city rejected that plan and also denied Young’s most recent application, this time for a club called Mirages Cabaret.

Young then sued the city, alleging that his civil rights had been violated. U.S. District Judge William J. Rea tentatively ruled in July that a city ordinance to restrict the location of adult businesses was unconstitutional.

Since then, Simi adopted its moratorium on creating new strip clubs and adult-only businesses, saying it needed time to devise a new ordinance that would be in accordance with the ruling.

Roger Diamond, a Santa Monica lawyer who represents Young, argued that the city is totally ignoring the judge’s directive.

“They have to allow [the club] somewhere. The only issue is where,” Diamond said. “The city doesn’t expressly admit that, but that’s what a moratorium does, it bans it throughout the city, so they are making a bad situation worse.

“We won on the grounds that there were too few places to operate and they are responding to the order by banning it completely,” he said.

The moratorium, which was set to end Sept. 11, has now been extended until next July.

And the city decided Thursday to appeal Rea’s decision against its ordinance to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.